Vaulz: We acted worse than our standards require.

      The Mexican Grand Prix was the fifth round of the season in which Williams failed to score points. Only one of its drivers reached the finish, Alex Albon, who came home 12th.

      Carlos Sainz encountered various, mostly unpleasant, incidents around the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez, and for him it ended in a crash on lap 67. The race was commented on by James Vowles, head of Williams Racing, who candidly admitted the team had not operated at its best.

      James Vowles: "Let's go through the incidents one by one. For Carlos, it effectively ended at the first corner after the start, where there was contact between three cars, involving him, Fernando Alonso and Liam Lawson.

      All three tried to get through where there was only room for two cars. There was quite a heavy impact to the area around the front-left of Carlos’s Williams, which perhaps didn't look that serious from the outside. However, the damage was actually quite significant, and we saw the vibrations getting worse with every lap.

      They were such that the wheel speed sensors on both front wheels failed, and other sensors around the front axle also stopped working. That tells you how strong the vibrations were in that area of the car.

      Because of that we called Carlos into the pits to change tyres and assess the scale of the problem, since we had to be sure the condition of the car allowed him to continue the race.

      When incidents like this happen, all systems can fail, but when the wheel speed sensors stop working there is a risk the pit-lane speed limiter will not function, and we were aware of that. When Carlos turned into the pits he was still trying to rely on the car's speed readings, as the sensors were still partially working, but he exceeded the limit.

      It's a shame we were penalised for that, especially as the speed was around 80.2 km/h and we usually target a limit of 79.9. The difference was 0.3 km/h, and it occurred in circumstances where the driver could not influence what was happening. Because of that we got a 5-second penalty.

      Carlos's first visit to the pits came earlier than planned because we had to get rid of the set of tyres mounted on the damaged wheels, which of course meant we switched to a two‑stop strategy. Accordingly, he had to go down the pit lane again.

      Given what happened on the first stop, we decided to trust Carlos to control his own speed, and he was travelling down the pit lane at roughly 73 km/h. At first that went fine, but as he was leaving the pit lane he reflexively pressed the speed limiter button, which was not working, and Carlos accelerated to 88–89 km/h.

      In the end all of this meant that while the car was capable of fighting for points, Sainz picked up another penalty, this time a drive-through, and that finally took away any chance we had.

      Carlos still tried to do everything he could, but he made a mistake and his car hit the barrier with the rear. That was the end of his day on track.

      As for Alex, it was a different story. This weekend we tried to somehow increase the pace of his car, which was not stable enough. We decided he would start on the hard tyres, and that was a mistake.

      The Hard compound simply didn't work, but our choice was driven by wanting to check how large the pace gap would be to the cars ahead of us, and we were prepared to take advantage of any opportunities that might arise, for example if the safety car came out.

      In reality it turned out Alex was losing too much on those tyres and was therefore at a disadvantage. He then switched to the soft tyres, but had a fairly long stint to do on them. Even so he could catch up to the rivals ahead, but he wasn't able to score points.

      All of this shows that we have potential, but to realise it we need to get everything right. In Mexico we performed below the standards we've upheld all year, but there are four races left and we'll have the opportunity to step up. I'm confident we can do it.

      We'll learn the lessons, regroup and try to perform better in Brazil."